Starbucks processes 8m mobile payments every week

Coffee chain Starbucks has 16 million active users of its mobile app who are making eight million mobile payments a week, equalling nearly 19% of all transactions in US stores, president and COO Kevin Johnson has revealed, and the company is preparing to roll out its successful Mobile Order and Pay service across the US, UK and Canada before the end of 2015.

ON TRACK: Kevin Johnson, COO at Starbucks, is delighted with results

The figures represent growth of three million users and one million weekly payments since CEO Howard Schultz last reported results in January. Mobile transactions are up three percentage points over the same time.

“We are delighted with the initial results of Mobile Order and Pay; our mobile ordering capability is now available in over 600 stores across the Pacific Northwest,” Johnson said during the company’s second quarter earnings call. “Our experience to date gives us confidence that, once fully deployed, Mobile Order and Pay will drive a significant increase in mobile payment transactions in stores across the US.

“Customer connection has always been core to who we are as a company, and we are leveraging the digital assets to expand and enhance that customer connection to what is now more than 16 million active users of our mobile app in the US alone. We remain on track to fully deploy Mobile Order and Pay to all US company-owned locations before this holiday season.”

As well as speeding up the rollout of Mobile Order and Pay in the US in the second half of this year, Starbucks will also be making the service available in the UK and Canada before the end of 2015.

“We are also investing in digital solutions to automate store tasks, freeing up our partners to focus more of their time and attention on customer engagement,” Johnson continued. “We are beginning with the deployment of handheld devices connected with the scanner to simplify things like order and inventory management.

The company also revealed that it is considering the prospect of white-labelling its mobile payments platform to others.

“We continue to be in a number of active dialogues right now about a number of different partnerships leveraging mobile,” Starbucks’ global chief strategy officer Matt Ryan explained.

“We see the continued growth as being our permission to do more and more in that space. We are not prepared to announce anything specific today, and what I can tell you is in the months and year to come there will be more on that front.”